ABC News: Did they find evidence of D.B. Cooper?

On November 24, 1971 a middle aged man, dressed in a business suit, hijacked a North West Orient Airlines plane heading from Portland, Oregon for Seattle, Washington and threatened to blow it up if he didn’t get four parachutes and $200k in cash, in $20 denomination.

When the plane landed in Seattle, Dan Cooper (or D.B., as listed on the passenger manifest) let all of the passengers off the plane, as well as two flight attendants and took off with the money, telling the flight crew still aboard to “fly to Mexico.”

In a daring getaway, Cooper jumped from the 727 into gale force winds over the Pacific Northwest, and has disappeared from history.

The case has never been solved, even though it pops up as a news item from time to time, as in 1980, when a young boy found $5800 in $20 dollar bills in a case along the Columbia River. In 2001, the FBI was able to pull DNA from the tie D.B. wore on the day of the heist.

Most believe that Cooper died in the fall, but regardless of the real outcome of D.B.’s life, the story has become the stuff of legend.

Now that we’re all caught up…

D.B. is back in the news agian, as around March 11, 2008 two children found an old parachute buried in a Washington filed, around 100 miles south of Seattle. (why is it always a child or young one that finds these things???)

FBI agent Larry Carr is working to excavate the remainder of the parachute. “It’s the right color, it’s the right size. It’s definitely the right location, so the investigation will tell.”

Carr also noted that parachutes found buried in the dirt are not a common occurance, so he hopes forensic tests will carry out to a big break in the case.